


Nostalgia

by Weissnichtwo (LoudenSwain713)



Series: vows of the faithless [3]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Booker is not okay, Character Study, Depression, Ficlet, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Memories, Metaphors, Post-Canon, Team as Family, Temporary Character Death, even though they're separated he still cares for them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25247941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoudenSwain713/pseuds/Weissnichtwo
Summary: Paris has changed in every way and in none of them. The Tower had not been built when he was born. The sky was still empty when all of his children were Dead. It has been a long life.The old bakery where he used to take his eldest, before the war, before Death, is still standing. Once a week, sometimes twice, he spends a few minutes there, taking in the smell of warm bread and pretending the children playing across the street are not strangers to him. Then a car rushes past and he is dragged back to the present with a ferocity he cannot bring himself to avoid.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Andy | Andromache of Scythia, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nile Freeman, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Quynh | Noriko
Series: vows of the faithless [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1829116
Comments: 18
Kudos: 202





	Nostalgia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crazyreader12](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazyreader12/gifts).



> Hi! I'll preface this by saying this fic would absolutely not exist in the form it's in now without help from the person mentioned above. All the gratitude to you, friend. Go read her work if you can!
> 
> This is sort of a sequel to the first fic in this series, Memories, which focuses on Quynh. I recommend reading that first to get the full scope of the various metaphors and references sprinkled throughout. Enjoy!

He is not like Nicky. He is not a man of faith. He _is_ a man of grief, though, and in the years he’s lived, he’s found that those are too closely intertwined to separate. Two sides of the same coin: one hopeful, one hopeless. Usually, Nicky is the only one who can cleave the coin apart and show a clear divide, helping him cross it, keep it, honor it. Of course, Nicky is no longer there to do so.

The angels come at night, brushing his temple with their feather-soft fingers. Without anyone to separate the hopeful from the hopeless, the dreams come too. They are relentlessly unchanging; he was able to trace every curve of them just a decade after Jean-Pierre’s Death, and the shapes are the same even all these years later. 

The sight of blood doesn’t phase him anymore, the scarlet stains almost (but not quite) forgotten under the weight of centuries. Consciousness is marginally better, but he is never fully able to escape the sickly, cloying scent of rotting flesh. 

In the dreams, Jean-Pierre is lying there, pale and angry, and he can do nothing but watch as his last son Dies. Sometime in the first week, the face staring up at him morphs into Andy’s.

He does not sleep for the next five days.

Paris has changed in every way and in none of them. The Eiffel Tower had not yet been thought of when he was born. The sky was still empty when all of his children were Dead. It has been a long life.

The old bakery where he used to take his eldest, before the war, before Death, is still standing. Once a week, sometimes twice, he spends a few minutes there, taking in the smell of warm bread and pretending the children playing across the street are not strangers to him. Then a car rushes past and he is dragged back to the present with a ferocity he cannot bring himself to avoid. This is usually because the car hits him. Once, the damage is so severe that he wakes up in the back of an ambulance. After that, he stops visiting the bakery and opts instead for the bar. There, the hours rush by, almost (but not quite) uncountable.

Five months into his exile, the dreams change. His nights become filled not with the pleading faces of Andy or Jean-Pierre, both mere centimeters from Death, but with the heaving, agonized sobs of a woman he has never seen. Her hands are bloody and shaking, but they do not come clean, no matter how hard she scours them. He hopes Nile is not dreaming of her too, that the youngest of them could be spared this insight into heartbreak, but he knows that it’s a fool’s hope. He can feel it in the threads that connect them across continents and the signal fires that light in his mind. 

He is not being subtle. The others could find him if they wanted to, almost as easy as dying. They do not.

The Seine is no longer the crystal-blue it once was, but it keeps him occupied for a couple of hours nonetheless. He tries to stay at the bottom, tries to cling to the silt of his past. It doesn’t work; he just keeps waking up, over and over and over again. Eventually, he drags himself up the bank and trudges back to his apartment. It is not home, not without them, but the walls offer enough of a reprieve from the outside world that he can be kept from exposing their secret, just for a little while.

When Quynh appears in his kitchen later that day, he cannot quite tear his eyes away from her. Her face betrays nothing of the agony in his dreams, but the emotion sings to him even so, thick and nearly choking. After a shallow, almost painful breath, he lowers the gun in his hands. It is a slow, unmistakeable movement, a truce between kindred spirits. 

His shoes have not yet dried.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for taking the time to read this! Comments and kudos are appreciated!


End file.
